Chinese Government’s PR Arm Gets iPad App

Did you miss the Chinese government’s ads in Times Square earlier this year, the series of images of ordinary and famous Chinese that repeated 300 times a day on a giant video screen in an effort to soften China’s image?

No need to fret–the ad now can be viewed, with music, in the Chinese government’s first app for Apple’s iPad.

The State Council Information Office’s iPad app

The new app, from the State Council Information Office, is free on Apple’s App Store and simple to use. It includes videos of press conferences and full, downloadable copies of the State Council’s white papers on subjects like national defense, Internet development, ethnic issues and human rights in Chinese and English from 2005 to 2010.

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The SCIO app isn’t likely to top rival the “Angry Birds” games and “Atari’s Greatest Hits” among the most popular apps any time soon. User reviews on the App Store were, on balance, running negative as of Wednesday afternoon, with 15 of 28 giving the app only one star, and 11 giving it the full five stars. In the Chinese App store, reviews were also mixed. Some users said it was useful and “good for understanding China,” encouraging other government organs to do the same. But one user criticized it as a misuse of public money, while another wrote “How could a thing full of lies be put on the shelf?”

The move is the latest in the Chinese government’s recent efforts to improve its image abroad, an effort that has entailed billions of dollars of investment in state media and propaganda outlets. The SCIO is largely responsible for getting the government’s message out, through white papers and press conferences, as well being one of the regulators of the media in China. A notice on its website said the app is meant “to increase the coverage and influence” of those efforts and “to introduce China to the world in a better way and to enhance the international image of China.”

Chinese authorities have become increasingly tech savvy in their public relations efforts. Many have opened Twitter-like microblogging accounts. State media companies have started new search engines, a microblogging service and online video websites.

At the same time, officials have become more aggressive in defending themselves against criticism–even as the government has intensified its efforts to stifle political dissent. Outspoken Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and dozens of others have been detained in the past few months and the government is stepping up efforts to stifle criticism expressed online.

Over the weekend, China responded to the China section of the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report–which detailed exhaustively Beijing’s widening crackdown on critics and free expression–by publishing its own report on human rights in the U.S. highlighting high rates of gun ownership, a “stubbornly high” unemployment rate, and poverty that it said had risen to record-high proportions. The U.S., it argued, uses human rights as “a political instrument to defame other nations’ image for its own strategic interests.”

Some U.S. government agencies have also embraced the tablet craze. IPad apps can be found for government entities including the New York State Senate, the Department of Public Safety in Alabama and the Office of Dietary Supplements of the National Institutes of Health, some which appear to have been developed by Nasdaq-listed NIC Inc., a company that provides government websites and other government online services. A number of mobile applications can be found on USA.gov. In China, the U.S. embassy has also been aggressive in its efforts to reach out to Chinese Internet users, though it doesn’t have an iPad app yet.

The SCIO app can be found by searching for the agency’s initials in the App Store. The SCIO didn’t respond to requests for comment, and it’s unclear whether it might also be developing a similar app for devices that use Google’s Android software. That would yield a fine irony: China’s government spreading its line using the technology of a company it has battled over censorship.

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